Sugarcane harvesters may include various harvesting devices, including assemblies for cutting, chopping, sorting, transporting, and otherwise gathering or processing sugarcane plants. In certain sugarcane harvesters, such harvesting devices may include base cutter assemblies, feed rollers, cutting drums, and so on. In known harvesters, various harvesting devices may be hydraulically powered by various hydraulic motors, which may be powered, in turn, by an engine-driven pump.
To actively harvest crops, a sugarcane harvester may move along a field with harvesting devices engaged, the harvesting devices gathering and processing material from rows of sugarcane plants. Gathered sugarcane stalks may be chopped into billets for delivery to a trailing wagon, while leaves and trash may be separated from the billets and ejected into the field. Power requirements while actively harvesting sugarcane may vary based on many factors, including the local thickness of the sugarcane plants, the configuration of the field, and so on.
After harvesting a given row (or rows) of plants, it may sometimes be necessary to reposition a sugarcane harvester before harvesting a new row (or rows). Accordingly, un-planted areas or “headlands” are typically provided at the end of sugarcane rows. In some cases, the harvesting devices of the harvester may remain activated during this repositioning.
At various other times, sugarcane harvesters may idle in place or otherwise hold position without actively gathering or processing sugarcane. For example, a sugarcane harvester within a field may sometimes pause its harvesting in order to wait for an empty wagon to arrive so that cleaned billets may be loaded onto the wagon for transport.